Response from: Stefan Töpfer    (01/07/08 12:39am)

Shawn,
You are so right, bootstrapping allows your business to grow, with the big difference, that you grow with your own money out of your own efforts.

This means you do not push your business to a size unsustainable by incoming business, giving you time to get it right and grow some more.

Stefan

Response from: Shawn    (01/07/08 3:30am)

Thanks for your comments, Stefan. I think there's also an issue of sustainability here. As a previous post linked to earlier here has suggested, bootstrapping requires income, head count (or number of employees)marketing and product quality to increase in pace, but it seems to me that bootstrapping itself will sort of force you into this model eventually. This would be a very different approach than heavily funding (externally) an expansion and knowing only after two or three years (when you are out of money or have no customers or both) that you made a big mistake.

Response from: Jason Holden    (01/09/08 2:52am)

Thanks for the mention Shawn.

Bootstrapping as Stefan rightly says allows you to grow without external shareholders providing funding and taking a big slice of your business.

If you are a success then it may be that you go down the route to which you refer, but as Stefan says you don't have to be the next Dell or Microsoft, but hey if you were would you really mind, after all, what a ride!

Response from: Shawn    (01/09/08 3:47am)

Big or small, bootstrapping will help you keep control of what you create. Thanks for the comment, Jason.

Response from: Connecting News, Commentaries and Blogs at NineReports.com

Google&1;s earnings disappoint; investors worry economy taking a toll ...Blogged about at How big can a bootstrapper be&6; - bootstrapme, Google Inc.&1;s top executives say all is well at the Internet search leader despite a rare earnings disappointmen...